Ann Wessmann

Artist Statement

In my studio practice, I explore themes relating to time, memory, beauty and the ephemeral, with a focus on the strength and fragility of human beings and the natural world.  With a background fiber and textile processes, I develop objects and installations through repetition and the accumulation of a variety of materials. Over the years materials have been chosen for their expressive potential; translucent vellum, various personal mementos such as locks of hair from family members, texts from family journals and letters, or collections of natural materials such as plants, shells, stones, or bones. The works have a strong relationship to text and textiles, pattern, transformation, order and chaos, landscape and the body.

 I hope to engage the viewer through the physicality and often the emotional resonance of materials and through the use of scale. Viewers often confront works which mirror the human body. Larger scale installations may surround the viewer. In some cases small pieces are made requiring the viewer to look from a very close perspective.

While the work may begin as a personal commemoration of the life of a family member or a place, or in the current work, a tree, my hope is that the work will have universality and will remind viewers of their own history and relationships.

 In my most recent work, I pay tribute to trees in a broad sense, while focusing on one of a pair of horse chestnut trees from my childhood home in Scituate.  I have come to developing this body of work after going through a process of observation and discovery, gathering and sorting the various plant materials; leaves, flowers, twigs, nuts, and hulls that fall to the ground from this special tree. These materials are essential to the life of the tree, but are generally overlooked and discarded.  These trees have been a part of my life for almost 69 years, and the works I have made serve as homage to the trees that have existed for so many years, going through their cycles of life as I go through mine.  The work also serves as a memorial for one of the trees which died after many years of decline.

Bio

Ann Wessmann is an artist living and working in Boston. She received a BS from Skidmore College and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Wessmann is a Professor Emerita at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, where she taught from 1978-2018 in the 3-D Fine Arts department, and was Program Coordinator for the Fibers program for 23 years.  Wessmann's mixed media wall reliefs, sculptural objects and site specific installations have been exhibited throughout the US including locally at the Fuller Craft Museum, the deCordova Sculpture Park & Museum, the Art Complex Museum, the Mills Gallery, Spoke Gallery @ Medicine Wheel Productions, and Suffolk University Gallery. Wessmann has been a member of the Kingston Gallery since 2002 and has had seven major solo shows and seven smaller solo shows at the Kingston since 2001.